Gmail

Gmail introduced new smart labels earlier this week as a Labs feature. When you activate this lab, Google will attempt to assign the appropriate label to the message. At this time, these labels are categorized as:

Bulk

Forums

Notifications

Personal

Promotions

This is a great first step, but think of how much further it could go! It would be amazing for Gmail to learn what labels it should apply to different mail depending on who sent it, what the subject is, and other pertinent data. For instance, our developers always label security updates as a ‘ToDo Item’, as well as a label that indicates what website it is pertinent to. While our current filters work great for this type of thing, it would make everyone’s lives so much easier if this happened in the background. So get on that, Google engineers. A pint of Guinness is in it for you next time we’re at the Googleplex.

It looks like Gmail engineers are experimenting with push desktop notifications in Google Chrome and Gmail. This is a long-awaited feature of web browsers, and will allow web applications to act more like traditional desktop applications. As more applications become web-based, ditching the traditional fat-client pieces, small things like this will help users with the transition.

Is the new option showing up in your settings? (Click on image for full-size.)